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The purpose of the paper was to explore the influence of the experience-centric approach and the concept of co-creation on service design and provision and to analyze the process of on-site experience co-creation between provider and consumer, particularly, how tour providers and tour guides enhance and support the process of co-creation.

The study reviews the literature on experience-centric approach and value co-creation, discusses personal resources and experience-centric service design as resources for co-creation. It analyzes primary data from 33 interviews and 28 observations of 11 sightseeing tour providers.

The methods and tools of tour providers’ service design were explored and evaluated whether they fit the criteria of the concept of co-creation and experience-centric approach. The findings show that small-group tour providers use the concept of co-creation to the biggest extent, followed by alternative tour providers. The study also analyzed what types of service designs support a co-creative service provision. Three steps were identified as steps to support and realize experience and value co-creation from the side of the service provider. Based on the empirical results, the attention-involve-make discover (AIM) model was created, which proposes that the process of value and experience co-creation happens by provoking attention, by engaging and involving and, finally, by making consumers to discover.

The originality of the paper lies in the creation of the AIM-model illustrating the on-site co-creation process in the context of guided tours, which can further be tested in other fields and areas.

The tourist experience has matured in its body of literature, but researchers still debate the best way to measure and define the concept. The purpose of this paper is to analyze and compare memorable and on-site tourist experiences from theoretical, empirical, and methodological perspectives. A review of the literature is used to identify and describe the next evolutionary research step which is the quality-of-life (QOL) aspect of tourism experiences. It is argued that the evolving focus on QOL attributes is fueled by the theories and concepts of service-dominant logic. The paper argues that value (co)created on all sides of the equation (e.g., customer or company) must be considered when carrying out research. The paper also finds that different value outcomes for the individual customer occur in both on-site and memorable experience contexts. The findings contest an earlier theoretical argument, suggesting that memorable tourist experiences provide more value than on-site tourist experience.

The aim of this chapter is to discuss the experience-centric strategy from the aspect of innovation management, its contribution to designing and managing valuable tourism experiences, especially in context of guided tours.

The study reviews literature on experience-centric approaches and innovation, it discusses the concepts of experience-centric innovation and experience innovation, particularly the role of experience design and market intelligence in experience-centric service processes. It analyzes empirical data from interviews with eleven tour providers.

Creating novel experiences through product innovation was found as the most common type of innovation on frames of guided tours. The group size was identified as an influential feature of the experience design, and imitation has proved to be a major threat. The role of knowledge management and dynamics of knowledge were explored, too, and tour guides were identified as experiential knowledge collectors and/or creators; thus their role in knowledge management is crucial alongside the market intelligence. In contract with theoretical proposition, costumer-driven innovation is not seen by tour providers as a crucial issue in creating memorable experiences.

The chapter studied only traditional guided tours where the customer meets the service provider, and the data was collected only in Budapest.

The chapter emphasized the role of market intelligence and experience design in the process of experience-centric service provision for a successful innovation – in frames of a theoretical model. The empirical results identified some main issues and obstacles in implementation of the experience-centric approach and innovative tools and processes in context of guided tours.